We have hit the point in this series where I genuinely have no idea how to discuss anything at all about this book without it being chockful of spoilers, so everything is under the cut!
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Book 57: Sweet Disorder by Rose Lerner
More regency romance! This time we're focusing on Phoebe, a full-figured widow who doesn't want to get married again until she needs money in order to help her younger sister. The local political organizations are willing to make it worth her while to either marry a Whig or a Tory for the votes, but she ends up feeling very strongly for Nick Dymond, the brother of the Whig candidate who has withdrawn from society since he returned from the war. However, he's not an option for her, so she reluctantly allows two other gentlemen to court her and tries to imagine giving up her love of writing for a loveless marriage.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. I thought the writing itself was fairly solid, but the characters never quite landed for me. I've already started reading the next book in the series and I think the central relationship/conflict is going to be more to my taste, so it may just be that this book isn't for me. I will say that the final part of the book during which everything is revealed and there are secrets and betrayals and lots of other exciting things was really fun to read, and the physical chemistry between Phoebe and Nick was very well written; it just didn't hit me emotionally. Hoping the next one is more to my liking!
Grade: C
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. I thought the writing itself was fairly solid, but the characters never quite landed for me. I've already started reading the next book in the series and I think the central relationship/conflict is going to be more to my taste, so it may just be that this book isn't for me. I will say that the final part of the book during which everything is revealed and there are secrets and betrayals and lots of other exciting things was really fun to read, and the physical chemistry between Phoebe and Nick was very well written; it just didn't hit me emotionally. Hoping the next one is more to my liking!
Grade: C
Book 56: Timepiece by Heather Albano
This is a very enjoyable Regency-era time travel book! It opens at the Battle of Waterloo, where Wellington's troops are faltering as they wait for the Prussian reinforcements. Wellington orders that their secret troops be brought out, who are Frankenstein men that have been created to defeat Napoleon. This will lead to tragic consequences in the future for the United Kingdom and beyond, if a group of time travelers can't put things right (that once went wrong).
Our main heroes are Elizabeth and William, two neighbors who travel into the late 19th century courtesy of a mysterious watch Elizabeth receives in the post. William is a former soldier whose right arm was seriously injured in battle, and Elizabeth is a young lady who is desperate to escape the staid life awaiting her. I enjoy both of them very much, and the burgeoning relationship between them develops in a very satisfying way.
The book occasionally focuses too long on characters who never quite hit home with me the way Elizabeth and William do, and I often felt I was just a step ahead of the narrative in terms of understanding what was happening, which sometimes meant the pacing dragged a bit. However, the biggest issue I had with the book was the very late discovery that it was, in fact, the first book of a trilogy. It ends on a fairly big cliffhanger, and because I thought it was a standalone, that cliffhanger just made me annoyed rather than eager to read the next one. The third book is coming out next year, though so if I am still interested in what happens next at that point, I'll pick up both the second and third books and finish it.
Grade: B
Our main heroes are Elizabeth and William, two neighbors who travel into the late 19th century courtesy of a mysterious watch Elizabeth receives in the post. William is a former soldier whose right arm was seriously injured in battle, and Elizabeth is a young lady who is desperate to escape the staid life awaiting her. I enjoy both of them very much, and the burgeoning relationship between them develops in a very satisfying way.
The book occasionally focuses too long on characters who never quite hit home with me the way Elizabeth and William do, and I often felt I was just a step ahead of the narrative in terms of understanding what was happening, which sometimes meant the pacing dragged a bit. However, the biggest issue I had with the book was the very late discovery that it was, in fact, the first book of a trilogy. It ends on a fairly big cliffhanger, and because I thought it was a standalone, that cliffhanger just made me annoyed rather than eager to read the next one. The third book is coming out next year, though so if I am still interested in what happens next at that point, I'll pick up both the second and third books and finish it.
Grade: B
Book 55: Nation by Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett is one of those authors who was hugely influential for so many of my friends, and somehow he completely passed me by until now. This is the first book of his I've read, and it's the sort of book that is very very well written but also doesn't feel like it's my kind of book, really.
Part of it is just that it's a post-apocalyptic, stranded on a desert island story, which are never my favorite kind of stories, even when they're told as well as this one is. It takes place on a world that's very much like our own in the not too terribly distant past, and it starts with a massive wave destroying everything on a chain of islands in an ocean like the South Pacific except for one boy named Mau. He had been off becoming a man, but because the wave destroys his home before he can be accepted back by his people as a man, he is now permanently stuck in a place in between, spiritually. He's not completely alone, however, because a ship from England carrying, among other people, an English girl named Daphne, is shipwrecked on his island, and Daphne (and a parrot) is the only survivor. And then things go from there.
Both Mau and Daphne are delightful, and much of the book is compulsively readable, because what Pratchett does with both language and narrative tropes is so inventive. But it's just not my kind of story, overall, and I feel like at the end he tries to have his cake and eat it too, which I understand and appreciate but which also felt a bit like cheating to me. I don't know. I feel like I'm damning it with faint praise to say that it's very good if you like that sort of thing, but that's where I'm at.
Grade: B
Part of it is just that it's a post-apocalyptic, stranded on a desert island story, which are never my favorite kind of stories, even when they're told as well as this one is. It takes place on a world that's very much like our own in the not too terribly distant past, and it starts with a massive wave destroying everything on a chain of islands in an ocean like the South Pacific except for one boy named Mau. He had been off becoming a man, but because the wave destroys his home before he can be accepted back by his people as a man, he is now permanently stuck in a place in between, spiritually. He's not completely alone, however, because a ship from England carrying, among other people, an English girl named Daphne, is shipwrecked on his island, and Daphne (and a parrot) is the only survivor. And then things go from there.
Both Mau and Daphne are delightful, and much of the book is compulsively readable, because what Pratchett does with both language and narrative tropes is so inventive. But it's just not my kind of story, overall, and I feel like at the end he tries to have his cake and eat it too, which I understand and appreciate but which also felt a bit like cheating to me. I don't know. I feel like I'm damning it with faint praise to say that it's very good if you like that sort of thing, but that's where I'm at.
Grade: B
Book 54: Thirteen Days by Robert F. Kennedy
Obviously one of the best kinds of books to read during turbulent times is an historical account of two weeks when the world danced with disaster. I'm being only somewhat sarcastic by saying that, honestly; in a lot of ways I find it deeply reassuring in a certain fatalistic way to remember that the world has always been on a knife's edge, and ever thinking that it's not is the dream. However, October 1962 certainly was a crucial time in the history and even sheer existence of humanity.
The construction of this book is fascinating. The central document itself was written as a memoir by RFK four or five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is a fairly straightforward narrative of how JFK made the decisions he did and the rationale behind those choices. He also really drives home that in the moment, none of them knew that they would succeed in averting nuclear war. It's so easy to examine history through the lens of what we know will happen, and to forget that of course no result or outcome is actually inevitable.
In addition to RFK's writings and the relevant primary sources (including the correspondence between JFK and Khrushchev), there is both a foreward written in the late 1990s by a RFK biographer, and an analysis of RFK's writings from the early 1970s. The shift in our understanding and interpretation of the actions taken, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declassification of certain documents, is readily apparent in the two commentaries on RFK's memoirs. I'm glad I read this book both because it expanded my understanding of the U.S.'s relationship with and to the USSR (a topic which feels more relevant to the future by the day) and because it's a compelling reminder that history is constantly being revised, for better and for worse.
Grade: A
The construction of this book is fascinating. The central document itself was written as a memoir by RFK four or five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is a fairly straightforward narrative of how JFK made the decisions he did and the rationale behind those choices. He also really drives home that in the moment, none of them knew that they would succeed in averting nuclear war. It's so easy to examine history through the lens of what we know will happen, and to forget that of course no result or outcome is actually inevitable.
In addition to RFK's writings and the relevant primary sources (including the correspondence between JFK and Khrushchev), there is both a foreward written in the late 1990s by a RFK biographer, and an analysis of RFK's writings from the early 1970s. The shift in our understanding and interpretation of the actions taken, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declassification of certain documents, is readily apparent in the two commentaries on RFK's memoirs. I'm glad I read this book both because it expanded my understanding of the U.S.'s relationship with and to the USSR (a topic which feels more relevant to the future by the day) and because it's a compelling reminder that history is constantly being revised, for better and for worse.
Grade: A
Book 53: A Margin of Promise by Emma Lanner
Note: I know the author of this book socially.
This is yet another m/m regency romance that I've owned for years but somehow never got around to actually reading. The story revolves around Isaac, who has come for his first Season before attending Cambridge. He is staying with his patron Lord Edmund Bancroft, whose dearest friend Gideon is a fairly indiscreet molly boy. Edmund has promised Isaac's father that he will help Isaac find a bride, but that isn't the life Isaac envisions for himself.
One of the more unusual aspects of this book is that I genuinely had no idea what the final pairing (or pairings) would be most of the way through the book. At the beginning of the story, Gideon has been holding a torch for his old friend Edmund for many years, but he's also quite taken with Isaac from their first meeting. Isaac idolizes Edmund while finding Gideon rather intriguing. And Edmund is a bit of a mess, emotionally, and seeks out other male partners while avoiding anything close to real intimacy for as long as he can.
Eventually that resistance has to break, and when it does (and how) results in a fairly madcap final act that includes kidnappings and false marriages and even a Lady Catherine de Bourgh-esque appearance. I would have liked the emotional arcs for the main characters to be a bit clearer, and I wasn't sure exactly how much of a fantasy version of the regency the setting was intended to be, but in the end I felt that the right couple got their happy ending.
Grade: B
This is yet another m/m regency romance that I've owned for years but somehow never got around to actually reading. The story revolves around Isaac, who has come for his first Season before attending Cambridge. He is staying with his patron Lord Edmund Bancroft, whose dearest friend Gideon is a fairly indiscreet molly boy. Edmund has promised Isaac's father that he will help Isaac find a bride, but that isn't the life Isaac envisions for himself.
One of the more unusual aspects of this book is that I genuinely had no idea what the final pairing (or pairings) would be most of the way through the book. At the beginning of the story, Gideon has been holding a torch for his old friend Edmund for many years, but he's also quite taken with Isaac from their first meeting. Isaac idolizes Edmund while finding Gideon rather intriguing. And Edmund is a bit of a mess, emotionally, and seeks out other male partners while avoiding anything close to real intimacy for as long as he can.
Eventually that resistance has to break, and when it does (and how) results in a fairly madcap final act that includes kidnappings and false marriages and even a Lady Catherine de Bourgh-esque appearance. I would have liked the emotional arcs for the main characters to be a bit clearer, and I wasn't sure exactly how much of a fantasy version of the regency the setting was intended to be, but in the end I felt that the right couple got their happy ending.
Grade: B
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Book 52: Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk
This is one of those books that I've owned for years and yet for some reason never actually got around to reading, and because it had sat there unread for so long my brain had concluded that there was a reason I hadn't read it. Well, my brain is clearly not to be trusted, because I enjoyed it a lot! Another point in favor of this crazy challenge.
Widdershins is a fictional New England town with a dark past. Percy Whyborne is an expert in languages at the local museum who is hired by a private detective named Griffin Flaherty to decode the diary of a local murdered man. They quickly discover that the secrets lurking under the surface of this prosperous town go far deeper than one murder, and with the help of Christine, an Egyptologist at Whyborne's museum and his only true friend, they find more than they had bargained for.
The relationship between Whyborne and Griffin is really satisfying. Whyborne has no expectation of being loved or desired, so he has a very hard time believing that Griffin could want to be with him. But Griffin has his own personal demons and insecurity, so the romance never feels imbalanced, or like Whyborne is being either disingenuous or silly. They're a partnership in which each of them is better at their jobs and at their lives because of the influence of the other person, and they balance out their weaknesses. I really loved that.
This book is the first in a series, and I will definitely be picking up more of them after I finish this challenge.
Grade: B
Widdershins is a fictional New England town with a dark past. Percy Whyborne is an expert in languages at the local museum who is hired by a private detective named Griffin Flaherty to decode the diary of a local murdered man. They quickly discover that the secrets lurking under the surface of this prosperous town go far deeper than one murder, and with the help of Christine, an Egyptologist at Whyborne's museum and his only true friend, they find more than they had bargained for.
The relationship between Whyborne and Griffin is really satisfying. Whyborne has no expectation of being loved or desired, so he has a very hard time believing that Griffin could want to be with him. But Griffin has his own personal demons and insecurity, so the romance never feels imbalanced, or like Whyborne is being either disingenuous or silly. They're a partnership in which each of them is better at their jobs and at their lives because of the influence of the other person, and they balance out their weaknesses. I really loved that.
This book is the first in a series, and I will definitely be picking up more of them after I finish this challenge.
Grade: B
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Book 51: The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett
This book was the next on the list as I continue to make my way through Harriet's favorite books, and you guys. I loved the first two books of the Lymond Chronicles. LOVED them. But this book was genuinely so much more than I was expecting. I thought I was prepared. I WAS NOT.
Where do I even start with this post. Probably I should put everything behind a cut, because let me tell you something: you do not want to be spoiled before reading this book. That has been true for every book of the series so far, but I think it's actually even more true for this one than it is for the first one.
Where do I even start with this post. Probably I should put everything behind a cut, because let me tell you something: you do not want to be spoiled before reading this book. That has been true for every book of the series so far, but I think it's actually even more true for this one than it is for the first one.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Book 50: Winter Wonderland by Heidi Cullinan
The final book in the Christmas Bears Trilogy, this one focuses on Paul, who's the last of the three best friends to still be single, even though he's the one who's wanted a relationship the most. This is partly because his family doesn't approve of his interest in men, so he's always wanted to create his own found family.
He initially dismisses the romantic overtures of Kyle, a nurse at the assisted living facility in town, because Kyle is 25 and Paul is in his late thirties. But it's really because he's not sure if he deserves love.
This was the weakest of the three stories for me. I like Paul, but of the three best friends in the group, he has always felt like the one who had the thinnest back story. It's obvious from the beginning that he and Arthur should never be together in the long run, but it's never clear where they are emotionally - was Paul in love with him? Were they both just settling? If so, why did Paul suddenly want more? The longer the series goes on, the less believable the relationships end up feeling, because they just don't actually behave like real people do. I wanted a happily ever after for Paul, but Kyle feels like the obvious option only because he's the last single gay guy in a town that's quite small but seems to be the next Provincetown. The book does acknowledge that, at least, and there are a bunch of small town initiatives that reminded me a lot of the Harvest Festival in Parks & Recreation, which I enjoyed. But unfortunately the central romance doesn't quite land.
Grade: C
He initially dismisses the romantic overtures of Kyle, a nurse at the assisted living facility in town, because Kyle is 25 and Paul is in his late thirties. But it's really because he's not sure if he deserves love.
This was the weakest of the three stories for me. I like Paul, but of the three best friends in the group, he has always felt like the one who had the thinnest back story. It's obvious from the beginning that he and Arthur should never be together in the long run, but it's never clear where they are emotionally - was Paul in love with him? Were they both just settling? If so, why did Paul suddenly want more? The longer the series goes on, the less believable the relationships end up feeling, because they just don't actually behave like real people do. I wanted a happily ever after for Paul, but Kyle feels like the obvious option only because he's the last single gay guy in a town that's quite small but seems to be the next Provincetown. The book does acknowledge that, at least, and there are a bunch of small town initiatives that reminded me a lot of the Harvest Festival in Parks & Recreation, which I enjoyed. But unfortunately the central romance doesn't quite land.
Grade: C
Book 49: Sleigh Ride by Heidi Cullinan
The second book in the Christmas Bears Trilogy, Sleigh Ride focuses on Arthur. After Paul moves out because Arthur refuses to commit to being in a real relationship with him, Arthur is suddenly alone for the first time in ten years. He's convinced that he's fine on his own, but his mother is determined to see him partnered up, and throws him in the path of the town librarian, Gabriel.
Gabriel is everything you'd imagine a small town librarian to be: prim and a bit proper and wonderful with children. But underneath that slightly prudish exterior, he's always wanted a boyfriend who would take him apart, both physically and emotionally. He doesn't like Gabriel at first, but could that dislike be hiding a burning attraction?
I'll be honest, the first sex scene between the two of them is just on the edge of being too rough, too soon for me. And I think that the author knows that, because the sex scene stops in the middle of it so they can have a discussion about consent that feels like it's there for the benefit of the reader, rather than because it's something the characters would actually do in the moment. Even stranger though is that once they actually start dating properly, and have established enough trust and knowledge of each other that the kind of rough BDSM scene play they engaged in right off the bat could be hot AND safe, they suddenly don't actually have very much kinky sex at all. Things fade to black, or are discussed but then not actually done, and so as a reader it didn't really deliver on its promise. If part of what makes them work as a couple is their sexual compatibility regarding kink, I want to actually see that successfully kinky sex. I want negotiated kink, but the talking and the action seemed to occur in the wrong order in this book. I wanted it to work better for me than it actually did.
Grade: C
Gabriel is everything you'd imagine a small town librarian to be: prim and a bit proper and wonderful with children. But underneath that slightly prudish exterior, he's always wanted a boyfriend who would take him apart, both physically and emotionally. He doesn't like Gabriel at first, but could that dislike be hiding a burning attraction?
I'll be honest, the first sex scene between the two of them is just on the edge of being too rough, too soon for me. And I think that the author knows that, because the sex scene stops in the middle of it so they can have a discussion about consent that feels like it's there for the benefit of the reader, rather than because it's something the characters would actually do in the moment. Even stranger though is that once they actually start dating properly, and have established enough trust and knowledge of each other that the kind of rough BDSM scene play they engaged in right off the bat could be hot AND safe, they suddenly don't actually have very much kinky sex at all. Things fade to black, or are discussed but then not actually done, and so as a reader it didn't really deliver on its promise. If part of what makes them work as a couple is their sexual compatibility regarding kink, I want to actually see that successfully kinky sex. I want negotiated kink, but the talking and the action seemed to occur in the wrong order in this book. I wanted it to work better for me than it actually did.
Grade: C
Book 48: Let It Snow by Heidi Cullinan
I had been planning on saving the next three books for November, both because they're Christmas themed and also because I knew they'd be fairly light and easy reads and I figured I'd need those a week before the election. But then my weekend ended up being more stressful than I had anticipated, and I needed some Christmas in July to take my mind off real life.
What I've come to think of as the Christmas Bears Trilogy starts with a blizzard that results in a lost traveler from out of town staying in a cabin with strangers and discovering love. Frankie is a stylist from the Twin Cities who ends up stranded in a small town near the Canadian border. He first sees three burly loggers in a town diner and assumes they're all prejudiced rednecks who would never accept a swishy guy like him, no matter how much they look like a lot of gay men's fantasies. But when he finds shelter in their well-stocked cabin outside of town after he drives off the road to avoid hitting a moose, he discovers that Marcus, Arthur and Paul are exactly that fantasy.
Arthur and Paul are in a tempestuous fuck buddy relationship, but Marcus is single after discovering that his boyfriend of three years had been cheating on him. He returned home to Logan, the small town where all three of them grew up, to lick his wounds and spend time with his mother, whose health is declining. Marcus is gruff with Frankie, but shockingly it's not because he dislikes him, it's because he reminds him of his ex!
This book has one too many moments of people doing dumb things because they're afraid of love, and in general people often behaved in certain ways seemingly only because the plot required them to so, but I did really like Marcus and Frankie together, and it was definitely the kind of book I needed to read this weekend.
Grade: B
What I've come to think of as the Christmas Bears Trilogy starts with a blizzard that results in a lost traveler from out of town staying in a cabin with strangers and discovering love. Frankie is a stylist from the Twin Cities who ends up stranded in a small town near the Canadian border. He first sees three burly loggers in a town diner and assumes they're all prejudiced rednecks who would never accept a swishy guy like him, no matter how much they look like a lot of gay men's fantasies. But when he finds shelter in their well-stocked cabin outside of town after he drives off the road to avoid hitting a moose, he discovers that Marcus, Arthur and Paul are exactly that fantasy.
Arthur and Paul are in a tempestuous fuck buddy relationship, but Marcus is single after discovering that his boyfriend of three years had been cheating on him. He returned home to Logan, the small town where all three of them grew up, to lick his wounds and spend time with his mother, whose health is declining. Marcus is gruff with Frankie, but shockingly it's not because he dislikes him, it's because he reminds him of his ex!
This book has one too many moments of people doing dumb things because they're afraid of love, and in general people often behaved in certain ways seemingly only because the plot required them to so, but I did really like Marcus and Frankie together, and it was definitely the kind of book I needed to read this weekend.
Grade: B
Book 47: The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan
This book is actually the final book in The Brothers Sinister series, which The Governess Affair and The Duchess War start. While I am definitely planning on going back and reading the books that go between The Duchess War and this one once I've finished this project, I didn't have any trouble following the plot or the emotional arc. I also think that there are a number of parallels between the two books that were probably more heightened by reading them back to back, which I enjoyed.
The character with the secret past in this book is Edward Clark, who was once Edward Delacey, the next Viscount Claridge. He was disavowed by his family during the Seige of Strasbourg and presumed dead, and now his younger brother James is set to inherit the title. Edward has no interest in claiming the title, but he comes back to England to prevent his brother from causing problems for Edward's childhood friend. Those efforts throw him into the path of Federica Marshall, the titular suffragette.
Federica, or Free as she's known, is an absolute delight of a character. She runs a newspaper that's for women and by women, and she is completely unintimidated by a scoundrel like Edward. That doesn't means she's not attracted to him, and her willingness to acknowledge such attraction completely disarms Edward. She is so fantastic, a character who is grounded in the realities of 19th century England while demonstrating exactly what women were doing to agitate and win the vote and the painstaking effort involved in achieving incremental victories. It isn't a fantasy, but it is inspirational, and doggedly optimistic, and I just loved her and their relationship so much. She made me want to go out there and do something and make some noise. A wonderful read, start to finish.
Grade: A
The character with the secret past in this book is Edward Clark, who was once Edward Delacey, the next Viscount Claridge. He was disavowed by his family during the Seige of Strasbourg and presumed dead, and now his younger brother James is set to inherit the title. Edward has no interest in claiming the title, but he comes back to England to prevent his brother from causing problems for Edward's childhood friend. Those efforts throw him into the path of Federica Marshall, the titular suffragette.
Federica, or Free as she's known, is an absolute delight of a character. She runs a newspaper that's for women and by women, and she is completely unintimidated by a scoundrel like Edward. That doesn't means she's not attracted to him, and her willingness to acknowledge such attraction completely disarms Edward. She is so fantastic, a character who is grounded in the realities of 19th century England while demonstrating exactly what women were doing to agitate and win the vote and the painstaking effort involved in achieving incremental victories. It isn't a fantasy, but it is inspirational, and doggedly optimistic, and I just loved her and their relationship so much. She made me want to go out there and do something and make some noise. A wonderful read, start to finish.
Grade: A
Book 46: The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
This book picks up many years after the end of The Governess Affair, the novella that is essentially a prequel to this entire series. It focuses on Robert, the Duke of Clermont, who is the son of the villain in The Governess Affair (and the half-brother of Oliver, Hugo and Serena's son). Robert is a duke who wishes to use his power and privilege to right the wrongs his father had committed while drawing as little attention to himself as he can. This brings him to Leicester, where he meets Minnie, a young woman who also wishes to blend in after a childhood that was anything but average. She discovers one of his secrets, and continues to outwit him while he falls more and more in love with her.
Honestly, a simple description of the main characters and the plot doesn't do the story justice at all, not least because I don't actually want to mention too many of the secrets because my god was I not expecting any of those twists. As Robert says when Minnie reveals the first of multiple secrets about her scandalous past, "I was...definitely not going to guess that." Minnie and Robert are both wonderful, the obstacles to their relationship are genuine problems and the route they take to overcome those obstacles feels plausible and right, and they're surrounded by fantastic supporting characters. They are both Good People in ways that make them exceptional to their time but not anachronistic, a character type which Milan writes extremely well. And the sexual tension and subsequent sex scenes are incredible.
What a delightful book. I am so charmed by everything about it! SO CHARMED. Milan is writing the gold standard of historical romances these days.
Grade: A
Honestly, a simple description of the main characters and the plot doesn't do the story justice at all, not least because I don't actually want to mention too many of the secrets because my god was I not expecting any of those twists. As Robert says when Minnie reveals the first of multiple secrets about her scandalous past, "I was...definitely not going to guess that." Minnie and Robert are both wonderful, the obstacles to their relationship are genuine problems and the route they take to overcome those obstacles feels plausible and right, and they're surrounded by fantastic supporting characters. They are both Good People in ways that make them exceptional to their time but not anachronistic, a character type which Milan writes extremely well. And the sexual tension and subsequent sex scenes are incredible.
What a delightful book. I am so charmed by everything about it! SO CHARMED. Milan is writing the gold standard of historical romances these days.
Grade: A
Friday, July 1, 2016
Book 45: The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan
So I got a quarter of the way through this novella before I had that light bulb moment of ...wait I've already read this, haven't I. And indeed, while I confess that I didn't remember the details of the story as well as I would have expected to, given that I had to have read it fairly recently, this definitely was a re-read rather than a first time read. Which is bugging me a BIT since it goes against the premise of this challenge, but oh well.
It was also a good thing that I read it before starting the next book in this series, because this novella starts off the universe with a nice chunk of backstory that will clearly inform the rest of the books. Serena Barton is a governess who is pregnant by the Duke of Clermont. Hugo Marshall is the Duke's man, the notorious Wolf of Clermont, who is in charge of handling such sticky situations on behalf of the Duke. Hugo finds Serena hard to treat as just another faceless problem to be solved, however, and the two of them fall in love. The attraction between the two of them is delightful, and the sex scene is simply fantastic, one of the best in historical m/f romance I've read in quite some time. And it sets the scene for the main series of the books so well. I can't wait to read the next one this weekend.
Grade: A
It was also a good thing that I read it before starting the next book in this series, because this novella starts off the universe with a nice chunk of backstory that will clearly inform the rest of the books. Serena Barton is a governess who is pregnant by the Duke of Clermont. Hugo Marshall is the Duke's man, the notorious Wolf of Clermont, who is in charge of handling such sticky situations on behalf of the Duke. Hugo finds Serena hard to treat as just another faceless problem to be solved, however, and the two of them fall in love. The attraction between the two of them is delightful, and the sex scene is simply fantastic, one of the best in historical m/f romance I've read in quite some time. And it sets the scene for the main series of the books so well. I can't wait to read the next one this weekend.
Grade: A
Book 44: Sole Support by Kaje Harper
This is the kind of book that would probably make a lot of people happy but dealt with a topic that I just didn't want to read about in romance. It's one part two internet nerds find love together (I'm in!) and one part dealing with a parent's decline due to dementia (I'm out). The romance between Mike and Kellen was lovely and pretty recognizable, for the most part, although neither of them really felt their age to me; they each seemed much closer to early twenties rather than late thirties or early forties. Part of that is probably due to the fact that Mike had never had any kind of relationship before, but I didn't really buy it. And 90% of the drama or tension in the book was due not to Kellen's mother's failing health, but his complete inability to communicate with anyone in his life about it and accept help. I am not suggesting that it is easy in a situation like that to reach out to people; I know it's not. But my problem with it was that it felt like merely a plot point in a romance, rather than something bigger and more important. I don't think that romances can only be about trivial problems and must avoid serious emotional issues altogether, but the way this book dealt with it didn't work for me, unfortunately.
Grade: C
Grade: C
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